Facebook allows third-party measurement and commits to an audit by the Media Rating Council
Facebook has been under fire since the revelations last year that it had been mistakenly inflating the view counts/durations on its videos. This may have influenced how brands spent marketing budgets, but the metrics were just plain wrong. As we saw in my chart of the day yesterday Facebook had been wrongly overstating views by as much as 80% .
In response to this and other revelations of widespread ad fraud in the online advertising industry, P&G's Chief Brand Officer announced a series of demands to online ad providers, which they would have to comply with or else P&G would spend its seven billion dollar ad budget elsewhere. The demands were as follows:
Adopting one viewability standard – P&G will be accepting the Media Ratings Council (MRC) - validated viewability standard, and expect all its agencies, media suppliers…
Chart of the day: Facebook advertising cost per click across the World
Facebook advertising cost per click (CPC) is highest in Australia, Norway and Japan, where as Taiwan, Portugal and South Africa were found to be cheapest for CPC ads, whilst cost per "like" was found to be highest in Germany at $0.58 per like and cheapest in Mexico at $0.03 per like.
The study also found that cost per app install was highest in the United States at $2.74 followed by Japan at $2.70 and cheapest in Vietnam at $0.38.
Cost per like was found to be most expensive at 18:00, possibly when Facebook is the busiest.
Younger users were also found to be cheaper to target and females are more expensive.
Notably Instagram was found to be more expensive than Facebook advertising.
Source: Buffer Social and Adespresso
Sample: Adespresso analysed over $100…
Facebook's updated inbox will allow marketers to manage messages across different Facebook-owned networks on a single platform.
As social has grown, it has diversified. Where once a marketer focused on social media may have just had to manage the company Facebook and Twitter accounts, with LinkedIn on top if they were B2B, now there is an abundance of networks. We can add Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat to the list of major platforms, and then there are Messenger apps likes Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp that also require attention. More niche sites like Reddit, Tumblr, SoundCloud, SlideShare and Imgur may also deserve a social presence, depending on the brand in question.
No one ever had success on a social network by quickly setting up a profile, posting a few times and then forgetting about it. To drive results these platforms need constant attention and effort from marketers, so inevitably the increasing number of platforms that…
Facebook's new analytics tool for Chatbots signals its desire to make bots a key part of Messenger's attractiveness to brands
Chatbots are the hot new trend that's got marketers excited this year. Their success comes from the confluence of two separate trends - the massive growth in the popularity of chat apps (which is in turn driven by the rise of mobile & social), and the development of ever more powerful AI technologies. Since Facebook announced it would support Chatbots on its Messenger app in April 2016, over 34,000 Messenger bots have been created. Whether it's Taco Bell's bot giving menu recommendations, being able to order an Uber via tapping a car icon in Facebook messenger or getting a rundown of the day's news from CNN's chatbot sent straight to you, brands have been quick to seize the potential afforded by building Chatbots within the Messenger platform.
It easy to see why…
A New Definition of Edgerank
Facebook Pages are not what they used to be.
It may (or may not) come as a surprise to discover that only a tiny proportion of the content published by Pages that you “Like” actually reaches your News Feed. Some studies put this percentage (known as “reach”) at as little as 2%. Even the most optimistic of studies suggest that little over 11% of a Page’s fans will see its content.
This is due to the existence of a filtering mechanism Facebook uses that employs a complex algorithm. Without the algorithm in place you’d be overwhelmed with something like 1,500 posts a day on your News Feed. And a lot of those would be from brand Pages.
Facebook is well aware that users like to see content from friends and family first, and dislike a News Feed cluttered with promotional messages from…
Facebook advertising is traditionally best for B2C marketers, but now B2B marketers can get in on the action.
Move over B2C marketers, the B2B crowd is coming to Facebook advertising, and they’re ready to play hardball!
Traditionally, Facebook advertising has been somewhat useless to B2B marketers. It’s a great tool for B2C marketers, who can offer discounts, promote sales and retarget buyers who have left items in their carts through adverts on Facebook, but these tactics don’t always work for the B2B crowd.
When it comes to advertising, B2C and B2B marketers have different goals in the back of their minds. B2B marketers are out to:
Generate increased knowledge and awareness of a product or service. You can create buyer personas to help you better understand who you’re targeting.
Reach out to a company advisors, decision-makers and others involved in a…
In-app purchasing functionality and new 'web view' feature transforms Messenger into a powerful tool for making mobile sales.
Importance: [rating=5] (For ecommerce businesses)
Recommended source: Facebook Developers Blog
Yesterday Facebook introduced changes to its Facebook Messenger app, the most important of which for marketers is the introduction of a 'buy' button which will let users buy products via bots that exist within Messenger. There will be no need for the customer to leave the Messenger APP, the bot will be able the handle the whole transaction without having to re-direct to external pages.
To see how it'll work, just take a quick look at the short clip below:
Users can give Messenger their card details so it can handle payments for them (something many have already done for sending money to friends via the app), this reduces friction and saves having to fill in fiddly forms on mobile devices. Businesses will then…
Facebook wants to leverage the power of its personal data to challenge Google for online Ad dominance
Importance: [rating=4] (For online advertisers)
Recommended source: Facebook for Business
Facebook is announcing a big extension to its audience network, which was launched in 2014 to let advertisers use Facebook's data for targeting customers with ads outside of Facebook.
Facebook will start selling video ads to cash in on this valuable section of the ad market. Ads purchased through Facebook's audience network can appear on the sites of any publishers signed up to use audience network, and can be targeted based on the data Facebook have from their users profile and activity within the platform. Facebook will let marketers know the number of views so brands can get an idea of the number of impressions which will have helped build brand awareness.
Taking…
Dynamic ads can now feature new services and are available on Instagram plus new Custom Audience targeting options
Importance: [rating=4] For Retailers and Travel marketers who can feature products and [rating=5] for all who use Custom Audiences which are also updated
Recommended Source: Facebook blog launch commentary
We first featured Facebook's launch of Dynamic Product ads in February 2015. They have proved popular with retailers with Facebook reporting that, to date, more than 2.5 billion unique products have been uploaded to Facebook.
Now Facebook has changed what it used to call 'Dynamic Product Adverts' to just 'Dynamic adverts' as they are altering them so they can feature more than just your traditional 'products' like shoes, computers or books.
Dynamic ads feature things that users are likely interested in after viewing them on a website or adding them to their basket, so they are essentially a form of remarketing or retargeting, where the products people were…
Brands can now display codes which can be scanned by users to start conversations on Facebook Messenger
Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended source: Facebook's blog
Facebook has announced a raft of new features for its Messenger app that promise to be rather interesting for business, as they offer opportunities for integrating messenger with their existing campaigns and utilising it for answering customer's questions. There are three new tools currently announced, which are: Messenger Codes, Messenger Usernames and Messenger Links.
How do they work?
The new codes for Messenger are just scannable codes which once picked up by your phone's camera automatically start a conversation with the brand that put out the code. Businesses could put them on all sorts of materials, be it online, in store or even business cards. It's kind of like QR codes but Facebook is gambling that by…
